


and the sprinkled words around your collar.

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hour's an orchestra with half the company missing; Freddie's passed away, Hector's hopeless and Lix is off to Russia - Bel and Randall are out of tune, lost and holding onto what they have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the sprinkled words around your collar.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started as a fic for kink_bingo.

Her office is a map; gridded and straight lines, a series of coordinates and codes. It is an atlas, an encyclopedia of worlds; sepia photographs of Europe, trinkets from Asia, bourbon for America. It is a globe, and Randall closes his eyes as he spins with it, trying to find the starting point's perfect red pin. He is a hopeless wander seeking the continents of her body, drowning in the sea of her eyes, and being swept out in the tempest which is Lix Storm. _Storm. Storm. Storm._

He has an index of objects in the filling cabinet of his mind: Spanish records' ink is fading, there's fine films dust gathering on the top, he still knows all the coordinates of Madrid and the codes of Barcelona. But Lime Grove - London - 1958 is a puzzle he is yet to solve, one he never will because he's dismantling the jigsaw before putting in the last piece and studying the final picture. The board seems the most obvious place to start, the carefully chalked up squares, he swipes their history away with her messy cursive until it's just a blank space for other stories written by other people, the woman who is going to replace her come Monday; mindless clutter filing the office, perfume lingering in the corridor that doesn't drive him wild, that isn't Spain. _Spain. Spain. Spain._

Her books go into boxes, categorised by genre- whether they're Austen or Marx, Twain or Trotsky- from their army rows he'd formed on the office floor, dust jackets removed for his nail to be run down the folded spine, and replaced before they're placed in the cardboard prisons once, three times. The map is picked apart next: the pins prick him as he lines them up, the string wrapped around his fingers tight enough for them to turn red and white and purple. He touches Spain where they met and fell in love, then Paris where he ran to, London because he came back and Russia because she's going there; she's creating the barrier of Scandinavia between them. She loves him but it isn't enough, she'd said. They need some time to think, she'd said, they're _cursed. cursed. cursed._

He makes his way over to her desk, one foot in front of the other before he sinks into her chair, frame sighing at the unfamiliar figure, upholstery worn with age, whiskey stains and cigarette burns. The debris on her desk is something he cannot touch, cannot fixate on, find an order for- it's her; paperwork and a teacup still rimmed with crimson lipstick, it's so imperfectly perfect and he cannot quite put his finger on it. He turns the lamp on and off in an attempt to appease him, on and off, on and off, finishes the word she'd been typing, pushing the carriage back into life, and finally reaches down to pull open her top drawer which has stuck over years of neglect and resists his touch. It's a Pandora's Box, he shouldn't have opened it because monsters creep out, shadows envelope him, and tiny spiders crawl up his arms as he takes out a stack of photographs he recalls taking, eclipsing her sleeping, bathing, writing in black and white time, each roll a document of thirty-six Holy mornings. The next few minutes aren't a sentimental reminiscence of happy moments, love drenched afternoons, it is a disciplined, methodical progression through their time together, the pictures unlocking memories he'd told himself he'd forgotten, evoking feelings he'd never imagined he could feel again.  And it's 1937, she is lying in the hotel bed, his beautiful Venus angel in repose… he feels the softness of the pillows cradling his head… counts the number of cracks in the ceiling- one on the left is particularly bad… flexes his shoulder until it clicks loudly enough for her to stir slightly… casts his gaze over the collection of photographs pinned to the wall opposite (seventy-six on the day he left, let her go) from the ones taken in Barcelona to Teruel… runs his fingers deep through his curls, matted with slumber… before his hand slips under the sheets, seeking her warmth once more. But there's seventy-eight in the stack- he counts them and recounts them- there's two he did not capture in his lens, one of their happiest moments, and one of her looking radiant, raven curls mantling her shoulders, her smile somehow tearful and triumphant  focused on the bundle nestled in the crook of her elbow: Sofia. _Sofia. Sofia. Sofia._

When he was a boy, his mother used to tell him stories; the bruises tainting the porcelain of her arms were the result of her falling over, he used to find her on the floor- tears on her cheek, whiskey on the air, blood merging with her lipstick. How had she gotten there? She walked into a door, of course, she was ever so clumsy. And years later, when his father disappeared ( _bastard. bastard. bastard.)_ he went to sea, he became a sailor and travelled to exotic lands, of course, and Randall- downy hair, standing four foot six in his Sunday best- had believed her. Perhaps he still did, perhaps that's why he explored the world, in some cruel Freudian sense. Perhaps he is like his father, he's broken promises to his dear mother, he is like his spineless name sake because he never used to be content until his blood had become all but alcohol, and he left Lix and their child.  But in Paris, at night, when his eyes had opened in darkness, and he had been pulled from sleep in his cold and empty bed, he had remembered her; swollen abdomen and hope, and it repulsed and frightened him, just as what he did to himself and who he was becoming repulsed and frightened him. The only way to go back to sleep was to tell himself a story, to believe a lie. And if even Morpheus wouldn't have him, because he thought of his mother how enraged he had been at her for believing her own stories, he took pills and raved into a dreamless slumber. _He was there. He saw their daughter being born, he looked into her eyes, touched her tiny hands. It was Lix who left in the wee hours, without so much as a word._

But he wasn't here; he did not look into her eyes or touch her tiny hands, it was him who left in the wee hours without so much as a word. It is him who is cursed, not Lix, and he slams his fist down onto the desk because she is going because she lost both her children because of his actions, and he hears expletives rip from his throat because he should have stayed, he should have reined Freddie in, he should have done something.

"When can I expect to be losing you, Mr Brown?" he is suddenly eliminated in audacious light, a shadow cast long in the early evening pivoted on the doorway. Miss Rowley - legs unstockinged, beige undergarments instead peeping out of her skirt pocket, the jacket of the blood orange suit discarded to reveal the teal silk blouse - watching him over the rim of her spectacles, a cigarette between her teeth.

"What?" he frowns for a moment before going back to looking at the desk, the array for pretend memories, and finds that they make him feel so dirty under his producer's scrutiny; she sounds bitter, angry, he wants to tell her to hold her fire, berate her like a child but he doesn't because she has every right to be angry - at him, at herself, at the injustice of it all, and he's the only one she has now, isn't he?

She sighs, detaching her limps languidly from the doorframe, and drips ash in a careful trail over to him, "well, Lix has gone," the words are heavy, hang over them like a layer of carbon monoxide, "Hector's useless," her hips knock in the desk, he doesn't look at her, he mustn't look at her, "and Freddie-" her voice breaks and fades on his name; she shouldn't be saying it, he can tell from her spasmodic flinch back that she hasn't said it for a long time.

And then, he does look at her: He studies the way her eyes are closed, eyelashes matted by unshed tears and fatigue. He notices the droop at the corner of her smudged mouth, her gaunt cheeks - she's getting thin. He bites back the urge to reach up and tuck the blonde tendrils behind her ear, sweep his thumb across the dark circles under her eyes which are too young and bright to be dimmed by crying, "Miss Rowley..." because in spite of all his bravado, the cold facade of a cold and careful Head of News, he does care about the young woman who has potential she hasn't yet learned how to handle, she is so like Lix it sometimes becoming too much to bear; she is Lix at twenty-seven with blonde curls, she could be Sofia in a hundred fairy tales, a thousand different universes.

A door bangs far off in the office, the lift groans with the dregs of worker finishing for the day, and his reverie dissolves before she can catch him staring, and he clears his throat, cursing himself for not just going home- as if this last deed would make her change her mind, his final labour of love for a lover he never had to hold, not completely, "working late," he tries to keep the concern out of his voice but it peels off his lips softer than he'd anticipated, it sends shock waves through his body.

Her eyes meet his for a second- glinting and azure- before she blinks, pushing her body away, arms just parallel lines braced against the desk, "I like to keep busy," she smiles humorlessly, squinting at him curiously, " _you_ , on the other hand..."

It must seem ridiculous to her through the naive eye of a spectator, for him to be there on a Friday evening, in her office, fiddling with her things, she doesn’t know about them, their history, their daughter; as far as she’s concerned, Lix is just the only one who can make him back down, they probably thought he was scared of her or that they were sleeping together (though the former is most likely, why would a  woman like her sink to his level of depravity?) “Miss Storm asked me to collect her things,” he tries weakly, motioning to the boxes on the floor, the bare board.

Surprise brightens Bel’s greying complexion for a second, she tilts her head as though just becoming aware of the chaos around them for the first time, “right,’ and swallows thickly, “right,” there’s a beat of silence, so raw Randall panics that she’s going to cry, “she’s really going through with it, then?”

It's a question he does not want to answer because to answer is to accept, and he doesn't want to accept it - not yet; that she's going, that he's missed their second chance before it even came because she is tired of waiting, _for God's sake, Randall, jump._ But he didn't jump when it mattered, he couldn't, he can't and he has to live with that, another nail in his lingering coffin, "she's got a job at the British Embassy," a tremor wavers in his voice, Bel raises a inquisitive eyebrow, "in Moscow."

She waits as though she expects him to continue, with a criticism or sarcastic comment perhaps, and she eyes him up when no such remark is produced, shifting to perch on the edge of the desk, her fashionable figure; curves and a tiny waist (the kind Lix didn't have in Spain - he'd caressed bones, rosebud breasts under his palm and told her she was beautiful) blocking his light somewhat, "I can't believe she's actually..." fingers trail over the Bakelite phone, "I thought she'd have a change of heart."

He attempts a laugh, a pretense of lighthearted camaraderie but she spots the photographs by his elbow, his breath grows heavier, it comes out as a sigh; too late to hide them now, Miss Rowley is too canny, "you know Lix..." her hand is on the pile, she's bringing them up to her nose to inspect them, and he stops, defeated. Maybe Lix told her, maybe-

"Not as well as you it seems."

Obviously not. She’s staring at him like that: all questions and excitement because it sounds like one of his stories; two journalists falling head over heels in love with each other in the midst of war, wanting to stay together through everything, being everything, and they look like that in the photographs from when they first met when Lix had joined the team half way through their treacherous journey to Madrid, Randall remembers that, dressed in a pretty blouse and crimson painted carefully on her lips, the purpose of her being there had seemed quite ambiguous. She was like a film star, a siren from the silver screen - a cut glass voice more accustomed to calling servants than screaming for help in battlefields, legs that long clad in trousers. He’d wanted to tell her to change because the Nationalists didn’t care _for la mujer moderna_ , lonely soldiers took advantage, but he hadn’t dared because he was enthralled by her, the name appearing so masculine on a deceptive telegram, and she'd liked to tease him.

Bel's gaze never leaves the photographs, taking them in and putting them at the back on the pile with such care, Randall feels his heart swell because she knows how precious they are to him, how much memories are worth, "I didn't know you were in Spain together," she traces her thumb over Lix face, smiling softly, twists her wrist to such an angle so he can see - a underground bar just outside Granada as they drank in '38, singing Republican chants and dancing until their feet bled. Someone had taken the shot, unbeknownst to them, the happy couple away from the crowd in profile; his hand on her stomach, a kiss below her ear, her turning slightly in his arms, head back in a laugh, "I mean, I assumed you were just-"

He’d thought Lix might have told Bel about those first few months exploring Spain, running on rice, whiskey and adrenalin, making love on early morning milk trains, omitting the later times, naturally. It strikes him as odd that she never confided in the younger woman, heartbreaking that she never spoke about Sofia to anyone other than him, "old friends," and he laughs under his breath, feeling a blush beginning to creep up his neck, "well, yes."

More pictures are put to the back, more memories sullied by fingerprints and eyes, Bel's good natured giggles and coos, ignoring his discomfort, "she looks happy," the moment between her fingers still makes him tingle, still stirs things within him it had when he captured it - her sprawled out on the, crawling towards him, camera in hand at the foot of the bed, smirking, imploring to come back to bed, "you both look so happy - did you love her?"

Had it ever been love? He can't recall exactly how many times he'd come to her in the middle of the night, asking for what? He hadn’t wanted love but something to let him forget, something he could control when the rest of the world was in chaos; nothing more than a quick fuck to him, a fling, perhaps; they never spoke of it; that's why she'd given birth to his child God-knows-where while he was miles away doing God-knows-what. That was habit, that detachment which had been schooled into them ever since they'd started in Spain, seeing those unimaginable horrors daily and learning to feel nothing, the lens had been their barrier, the pen flowing onto the page oddly cathartic. Perhaps loving Lix and being love had been habit- is habit, only with the former seemingly missing. He opens his mouth to reply, stricken but she doesn't give him chance.

She flicks off her glasses in one swift motion, fingers working together with practiced ease, Randall fixes his attention on it, "you must have," he follows her hands as they cut the photos through the air carelessly, "to take these pictures and I've seen the way you look at her," her gaze catches his, wistful and watery, searching his face for words he can't give her, "no-one's ever looked at me like that, not even-" and then she freezes, hearing her own voice echo around them, a sharp gasp following.

"Miss Rowley..." he starts carefully, his hand skirting along the desk to touch her leg before he thinks better of it and presses his nails into his palm; _it is not his place. it is not his place. it is not his place._ He is her Head of News, he is old enough to be her father and even a tiny, innocent gesture of comfort could be misinterpreted if they were caught, anything to help the Board's case.

Photographs fall from her grasp, spill out in a black and white waterfall onto the floor, he stiffens, she whispers _I'm sorry, shit, sorry_ , shaking and slipping to her feet, a hurried exit through the nearest door, and he doesn't look at her. He doesn't look at his pictures, bent and ruined until the door clicks behind him.


End file.
